Project description

This is our rather interesting project revolving around the addition of LEDs to a Paignton Zoo Great Big Rhino.

The project is currently at a stage of publicly displaying the rhino that we’ve been working on, and this is what most of the information currently shown is about. However, this project has also served as way of developing custom LED arrays which can be used to show any kind of information you can think off! We currently have some plans to use the technology produced in the upcoming Graphical Web Conference.

Introduction

As currently only the rhino has been produced, let’s start by introducing it! The lab was provided with the Rhino from Paignton Zoo as part of their Great Big Rhino Project. This project is a mass public art event spread across the English Riviera and Exeter city. Basically this means life-sized rhino sculptures have been placed around parts of Devon and you can go and see them for free!

How to generate this interest

The team decided that adding LEDs to the rhino would be the best way to do this! This was to differentiate our rhino from the others which are usually painted. This idea came from the collaborative nature of the lab. It also acts to highlight the core principals of the lab: to show the intersection between design, technology and science.

Locations and future information

All the details of this project are specified in the The Story of An LED Rhino blog post at the bottom of this page. This gives you all the information needed to make your own LED array. The code required is also all publicly available on GitHub, yay!